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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
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Sales rank 469
Customers rating (based on 509 reviews)
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A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know. He offers surprisingly simple tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them.Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book–itself a black swan. *2nd Edition, With a new essay: "On Robustness and Fragility"
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| Publisher | Random House | | Release date | 04/2007 | | Availability | Usually ships in 24 hours | | Edition | Hardcover |
| | List price | $28 | | Our price | $17.63 (you save 37.04%) | | Used price | from $9.24 |
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 Applied mathematics meets philosophy
Dusted this masterpiece off and re-read it again due to the market uncertainties. Times like this everyone has an opinion, but no one has a clue. Taleb's unique background, being a student of randomness, a Wharton MBA, and a former derivatives trader at a hedge fund provides the perfect backdrop for analytical thought in moments of fear and sheer speculation.
These current chaotic financial fears breaths truth in so many statements he makes in Black Swan. I'd highly recommend people pick up a copy for keeping themselves grounded and reducing the urge to make rash decisions. The main thesis is to persuade people to understand the past does not predict the future - aberrations occur that destroy our deeply seated logic and certainty of the ways things should react to uncertainty, but suddenly don't.
All in all, a fascinating, timeless treatise from a philosophical point of view and market based one.
 A book that provoke your thought
This book is very opinionated but it provide a lot of provocative insights, one of few book that shake your conventional belief on the subject of capital market.
 A little knowledge is a dangerous thing
Only a limo driver (without belittleing the trade) would use induction outside a formal system, or apply Gauss distribution to a single observation, although to be fair the author gives warning about reading chapter 15 with its confused discussion of the normal distribution. Overall entertaining and to be recommended, but not to be taken too seriously.
 A book too far
This is a book of 366 pages which tries to communicate the following thought: The future is unpredictable, and one big reason it's unpredictable is that unexpected events occur which are unforeseeable. These events are called black swans. If a good editor had edited this book, the book could have been cut to 50 pages. An even better editor would have cut the book to 10 pages. This book is essentially a one page magazine article for which Nassim Taleb got a book deal to expand the gist of the article to 366 pages. The writing is unfocused, wandering, disjointed, unconnected, and of a style one might call stream-of-conscious. This reviewer couldn't get through more than half of the book before he felt that reading the last half would be a boring, waste of time. This book was purchased through Amazon, and the purchase demonstrates the downside of buying a book based upon media reputation but, sight unseen.
Not for Cab Drivers
Most of the people that buy this book do so to seek information to gain a larger perspective (advantage)? in life. However, most (myself included) are "cab drivers" not CEOs. When Puckish guys like Taleb who are obviously well read are allowed the luxury of a platform on which to ramble they make what seems a no-lose case for their cause. But they're not talking to us cab drivers, they're speaking to CEOs. To what end other than a potential trickle-down effect do regular folk hope to gain by examining his pearls before the swine? Not much, I'm afraid. His Optima fund is nothing more than a contrarian insurance policy the moneyed few can utilize in case of disaster in the market. I'm not saying that's a bad thing but it is hardly original. I am but the lowliest of the lowly and I've been saying for the better part of a year that hyperinflation may be around the corner. Am I some kind of genius? Hardly. In fact, even if many of the average Joes in this country know that their entire way of life hangs in the equilibrial balance of decisions made by self-serving morons they simply do not have the resources to do anything about it. In essence most of the people that buy and read his books are screwed either way. Then there are pearls such as the case he makes regarding the common intelligence test question (I'm paraphrasing because I don't feel like looking it up): "If all Zagrots are Zimbles then are all Zimbles Zagrots?" Then he delicately makes it analogous to a racial situation by implying that even though all of Race A may be Criminals, all Criminals are not necessarily comprised of Race A, then cheekily concludes that even those who know better will cringe when on alone on an elevator with a member of Race A. Hmmm? It seems to me that if I am to avoid a potential Black Swan event it would behoove me to avoid the elevator, right? And that's where all his books fall flat. They spend a lot of time criticizing our human foibles but very little time explaining what to do about them. Perhaps I could make a case for reading his books if I felt that, in some way, they illuminated my mind in such a way that they enabled me to avoid the pitfalls in thinking that seem to plague us all. He credits some of his own ability for abstract thinking from reading tons of books and becoming an aesthete. A rather impractical solution for us Cab Drivers. So all a guy like myself can derive from his books is a lengthy endorsement for his Optima fund. Except it doesn't matter because in perfect Talebian style the fund is closed to outside investors. It figures.
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